Both Christians and Ottomans resorted to extreme levels of cruelty of a Grand Guignol kind. The bags full of Turkish noses sent by the Uskoks from Senj to Charles V in 1532 may have been one of those gifts more fun to send than to receive, but for much of the century it was in effect these bags that made it clear how useful the Uskoks were. Their sheer excessive savagery allowed them, from Graz’s point of view, to act in a semi-deniable way, a tendency exacerbated by Graz’s lack of money or supplies, which meant that they had no leverage anyway with Senj.
